Its just that the obsession changes, still centered around music in one form or another.
Its been a few weeks now that my CD has been out, and I have sold half a dozen copies, enough to where I had to take more down to CDBaby. Interesting to me, the person that took my CDs in was Derek Sivers, who had the great idea for CDBaby in the first place. I told him I came in with a restock, that I had just started selling thru CDBaby. He told me that there are a couple of different types of people who sell thru his site: the first have just wanted to release a record their whole life, and as soon as they do, they don’t really care about selling any, just getting it done so that they could sell it is enough. I understand that a bit, since I was so crazed about getting it done myself.
The second type, like me, actually want to sell the damn things, and that’s a more active stance.
That is where I am now, stuck in how to promote this CD now that I have it. Trust me, its not as much fun as playing music, but if I am as serious about selling as I was in creating, I just have to do the work and figure out how to get more exposure.
One thing I did recently was to get a spot on MySpace.com. This is a huge free network (41 million strong) that apparently every knew about but me. It seems to have lots of uses, from a giant chat place for kids to ways of people promoting themselves for music and god knows what else, and of course links to porn sites. As usual with any public forum, but still….And of course it seems, from a casual perusal, that everyone on MySpace is totally self-absorbed. Maybe I fit right in????
Certainly there is a lot of music on there, and what I did was to get a musicians site, which I guess is different somehow than a personal site. Its quite impressive that you can upload four songs and in just minutes they will be added to your profile in a little custom mp3 player. You can randomize the player, and it starts playing as soon as you hit the page.
There is also a blog on there – like I need another one but hmm, maybe I could make it more general, not as targeted to musicians as this one. Forcing me to write more, and that could be good too.
I took one of my CDs over to a local music store, where I have dropped some cash and it was a positive experience for me. The guys who worked there checked out the cover and artwork, the whole package on my CD, and gave me some great feedback on how professional it looked. I guess they are putting it on the store CD spin, so maybe when I stop in sometime I will hear it. In any event, I felt good about that, again it shows its worth it to have the packaging done professionally.
I have been doing some more work with Jeff too. Its getting a bit more concrete, there is something like half a song done in some fashion now, and we are settling in to some sort of work pattern. At this point it is more like Jeff saying, I want to hear a bit more of this (whatever this may be) at this point, and I am working the computer to fix it, but slowly its evolving.
I have managed to make my XL7 work as a controller for Reaktor and Battery, and for the drums especially this is quite excellent. Hitting my fingers on the pads is way better than pretending to play drums on the keyboard. How I wish I had an electronic drum set, or a hand drum that I could trigger midi from! But these are all out of range for me at this point.
Jeff and I did some work on Saturday, and he brought over a couple of CDs of Egyptian music that featured something I had never heard of before – quarter tone trumpet and saxophone! I was sort of flabbergasted, actually, to hear of such things, I had no idea that they even existed. I knew that middle eastern music has quarter tone accordions (which kick some SERIOUS ass!) but I never knew about the horns.
A quick google search brought me up some interesting things: Don Ellis was quite the quarter tone trumpter, even had a four valve quarter tone trumpet constructed for him. I will have to look into this some more, but of course buying a custom made trumpet for me is out of the question.
However, I did find something else: quarter tone fingering charts for my sax! Now this I may actually be able to pull off, and it just gets me that after all these years I could possibly play more notes on my beloved Martin tenor – can’t wait to try this. I am actually listening to some quarter tone sax now, and sure enough it does have that wonderful minor tonality I love so much in music from the middle east.
Cool!
That’s it for the moment. I get together with Jeff again Tuesday, and hopefully more progress from there. Stay tuned, and hey, buy my CD – makes a great Hanukkah gift!